How The Public Was Fooled on climate and energy by UN lobbyists
Both are held in high regard by governments and (some of – Ed) the public but the IPCC should more realistically be seen as a co-ordinator and publicist of lobbying, and the UNFCCC using that lobbying to pressure governments into agreeing with its demands.
The IPCC describes its role as:
“…to assess …information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”
It is therefore an organization that deals with a very specific subject and only assesses other people’s work on this subject.
These immediately mark it as a lobbyist organization.
A careful reading of the climate assessment reports, which it produces approximately every six years, shows the kind of lobbying that the IPCC does itself, or that it endorses by publishing the reports.
Like other lobbyists the IPCC claims that the issue is very important, but the temperature data it uses indicates less than one degree Celsius warming in the last 100 years. Key material that its reports have cited have sometimes been proven false.
The “hockey stick” temperature graph used eight times in its 2001 report was shown to be false just a few years later.
The authors of IPCC reports seem to only assess source information for whether it supports the idea of man-made warming. The latest IPCC report cited the only scientific paper of nine on the same subject that supported its claims, the others were simply ignored.
The IPCC reports also ignore scientific papers that imply that the human influence is minor and changes in climate are due to natural causes. For a comprehensive picture of the risks of human-induced ‘climate change’ such papers should be included.
It’s not only scientific papers that the IPCC fails to properly assess. In part of the review process for its 2013 report it was disclosed that IPCC authors don’t check the all-important temperature data that it uses.
In the latest report we found new versions of the temperature data and greater emphasis on similar data from other institutes, which was rather futile because they all draw on data from the same national meteorological services.
The IPCC also ignores the many benefits of both an increase in in temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide. The first will mean fewer deaths from extreme temperatures and an increase in land suitable for agriculture, which the second means greater growth of vegetation, which means a greener world.
The reports often mention studies that used climate models but read the details more carefully and we find that those models are inaccurate. According to experts, some of the key science in the reports is also wrong.
The reports talk at length about the ‘Global Warming Potential’ (GWP) of various ‘greenhouse gases’, such as methane’s GWP being 23 times greater than that for carbon dioxide. The figures are incorrect because they talk about the gases in isolation rather mixed with other gases as they are in the atmosphere, and the difference is very important.
The reports also say that ‘greenhouse gases’ trap infrared radiation.
Other scientists say that this is untrue. The energy carried by that radiation is never trapped but is moved within the atmosphere.
IPCC reports claim to have multiple lines of evidence to support its claims, but read them closely and you’ll find that while they might be evidence of warming, they don’t offer credible evidence about the cause.
The lobbying in the IPCC’s reports is only part of a larger picture. When the main body of the report is written, government representatives are given a draft Summary for Policymakers (SPM) written by selected authors of the main report.
The representatives, probably many with little knowledge of the details in the main part of the report, are then coerced into agreement and instructed to “negotiate” the final version of the SPM.
After the SPM is published, the main report is modified to bring the documents into agreement. At the same time the UNFCCC exaggerates the IPCC’s claims even further by talking about “the threat of climate change”, urgent action being required and there being a “climate emergency”.
None of this is true but the UNFCCC pressure governments into acceding to demands for international agreements such as the Paris Climate Agreement and ‘Net Zero’.
The lobbying by the IPCC and then the UNFCCC is largely successful because it has the very powerful UN media machine spreading stories around the world in almost every language. The IPCC was established in 1988 by two United Nations agencies, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
The UNEP was very experienced in lobbying. Some of its lobbying was practical and resulted in things like a reduction in pollution, but on more controversial issues it took positions that are questionable.
It discouraged countries from using DDT and pressed hard for a ban. That ban was rejected but not before an estimated 20 million people had died from malaria, against which DDT was a cheap and effective defence.
In the 1970s the UNEP claimed that trees were being killed by “acid rain” created by industrial pollutants in the atmosphere being absorbed by rain. No evidence was found and the trees recovered naturally from what was only an infestation.
The UNEP also lobbied hard against CFC gases, typically found in spray cans of various types and in refrigerants, on the grounds that they damaged the ozone layer. A ban was implemented in 1995 and the world spent billions of dollars on replacement gases.
Almost 30 years after that ban there’s no sign that the hole in the ozone layer is shrinking.
Many scientists point to factors that are inconsistent with CFCs causing that hole, including its annual cycle, the cycles at both poles being offset but not by the six months that would indicate a seasonal factor, and even research showing that the process by which CFCs are said to cause the damage occurs much too slowly.
On each matter the UNEP jumped to conclusions long before scientists had properly investigated the subjects, then forced those doubtful conclusions onto the world.
The establishment of the IPCC was based on similar premature conclusions, which meant that the IPCC was a lobbyist organization from the start.
Over time the various supporters of the IPCC have also joined its lobbying efforts. The United Nations as a whole and its secretary-general have lobbied hard with wild exaggerations about the planet ‘boiling’.
Various scientists have joined in, perhaps not so much for the IPCC as much as to protect their incomes, reputations and power.
Others have joined the lobbying too, all seeking to gain in some way from the situation The Paris Climate Agreement and the push for ‘Net Zero’, and the associated issues, like forcing electric vehicles onto us all, are very weak on scientific justification but the result of lobbying that manipulates global media outlets and pressures governments.
Header image: Tripadvisor
Bold emphasis added
Editor’s note: there is no ‘hole’ in the ozone layer. There is a natural thinning of the layer at the poles, but at no time have we observed a complete absence of ozone anywhere.
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Rudgar
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The models cannot be right. It is impossible, and the IPCC knows it:
Section 14.2.2. of the Scientific Section of Third IPCC Assessment Report, (2001) titled “Predictability in a Chaotic System” says:
“The climate system is particularly challenging since it is known that components in the system are inherently chaotic; there are feedbacks that could potentially switch sign, and there are central processes that affect the system in a complicated, non-linear manner. These complex, chaotic, non-linear dynamics are an inherent aspect of the climate system.”
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible”.
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